Fenrisulfr crouched and growled, ready to strike. Then he heard: ‘Chief? Fenrisulfr?’

‘Come inside, good Brökkr.’

Behind Brökkr came Egil Blood-Sword, then his warrior Davith, and Ári from Fenrisulfr’s band, along with the chief holy man, whose face was pale.

‘Y-you killed Stígr. He was under our protection.’

Fenrisulfr felt himself tremble.

‘Don’t think much of your protection,’ said Davith, while Egil frowned.

‘This was a creature of darkness,’ said Fenrisulfr. ‘A seithr adept. An abomination, holy man, that you sheltered.’

‘You had no—’

But the holy man reached out to grab Fenrisulfr, and that was a mistake.

‘Agh!’

Blood gushed again as Fenrisulfr’s axe severed the arm.

‘Shit,’ said Egil.

He punched the howling holy man in the back of the neck, and the holy man dropped face-first and silent, blood spurting from the glistening stump.

Then Egil looked at Fenrisulfr and grinned.

‘Guess we just changed our plans.’

Behind Fenrisulfr, Thóllakr groaned as he swung himself up from the cot, and put one arm around the young woman, who had not spoken and who looked in shock. It was a wordless claim of ownership or at least protection, which his fellow warriors would not break. The remaining young holy man shrank back, as if hoping no one would notice him.

‘Blood and death,’ said Fenrisulfr quietly.

‘Blood and death,’ agreed Egil Blood-Sword.

And Brökkr laughed.

‘The Hell-Wolf is with us again.’

Fenrisulfr growled once more as berserkergangr came upon him. Egil dropped to one side and Brökkr to the other, understanding the danger, and allowed Fenrisulfr to rush outside first, before following with weapons ready. Fenrisulfr, sprinting hard, gave vent to his wolf-warrior’s roar, and everywhere the raiders responded, heartbeat-fast, drawing and swinging weapons, instantly transformed in a way soft villagers and holy men could never understand or cope with.

And the slaughter began, as the Middle World reduced to two things only, for in warrior rage it is hard to hear the screaming.

Blood and death were all.

TWENTY-NINE

VIJAYA & METRONOME STATION, 2606 AD

Every war needs a name, though its survivors normally term it just that: The War. In human history there had never been a war across the stars, never mind spanning continua; but as the hunt for revenge against the Zajinets intensified, the massively non-linear dynamics of mu-space engagements, not to mention the indecipherable thought processes of the enemy, meant that for Pilots, only one name sufficed for the struggle thrust upon them.

They called it the Chaos Conflict.

And while human warfare requires dehumanising the enemy – because over ninety per cent of men and women possess strong inhibitions against killing their own species – the Zajinets were clearly alien already. The difficulty for strategic planners was in understanding them enough to predict their actions and reactions.

Roger Blackstone knew of the Zajinets’ fears, thanks to Ro McNamara, and he had shared what he knew with his superior officers. The key quotation was this: ‘They [meaning humanity] will allow the darkness to be born. It will spread across the galaxy, and they won’t fight back until billions have perished.’

The numbers of Pilots training for combat and adopting full-time military roles continued to increase, to perhaps two per cent of Pilots possessing ships, but that figure was a guess. Roger did not have clearance for accurate numbers. Conversely, details of his ability remained classified, because there was only one of him, along with a tiny number of Pilots with a weak sensitivity to the darkness.

Hence the importance of allies who might share Roger’s ability, even though they were confined to realspace.

On first arrival at Vachss Station, Roger had checked the residents’ list and failed to find the name he was looking for. But al-Khalid had given him access to the arrivals/departures data, and it seemed that he was four standard tendays (or a Vijayan month) too late: Leeja Rigelle had departed for Earth, no return journey booked; and a certain Tannier had flown with her.

There were things to distract Roger. His work meant spending half of his time on Vijaya’s surface, based in a luxurious building in Mintberg that would have done justice to Imperial Rome or Byzantium, with some high-tech embellishments. It was in many ways a Renaissance or neo-classical culture, and he came to enjoy being among the Haxigoji.

Whenever possible, he flew, coursing mu-space and filling himself-and-ship with energised elation; and when Corinne, also graduated from Tangleknot, had leave from her classified Admiralty work, she would fly to Vachss Station where they would book a suite together and not venture outside until it was time for her to leave.

Their future was a subject they avoided.

Local Haxigoji, when Roger was in Mintberg, were used to seeing him pound the streets early in their twenty-eight hour day (he had adjusted his circadian rhythms to suit), running and returning to his quarters for strength and combat training. On occasion, to their mutual benefit, he sparred with Haxigoji bannermen from the City Guard.

Working alongside Nectarblossom, he embarked on creating a training programme for Haxigoji recruits: learning how to move among humanity, deciphering their cultures, and the clues that might lead them to a darkness-corrupted human, and how to deal with the authorities when they detected such a person. Combat skills were a part of it, and Roger drilled them hard because it was more than their own lives at stake; but he also emphasised the extent to which this was a last resort.

Then there were anti-surveillance skills and the like, because once Haxigoji started living among humans, and the darkness-corrupted individuals among them understood the threat, all Haxigoji would be at risk of assassination. It should not be a high risk, since any act of violence brought attention, but it was a factor.

It took time to get the programme up and running, but by the end of two standard years, the third batch of trainees was getting ready for their final test. Partly for psychological reasons, to seal in the previous training, every intense programme needs a rite of passage on completion.

And that, for these very special recruits, was where the human prisoners came in.

On several occasions, Nectarblossom told him, ‘You should not feel sorry for them, Roger. They’re not really human. Their infection makes them something else.’

‘We can cure infections,’ he had answered the first time.

‘Not this one.’

Initially, for safety, Roger preferred to use non-Pilot agents of the darkness, captured on sweeps through realspace cities or orbitals. At first, those sweeps had been carried out by other Pilots on Max Gould’s books, recorded as possessing a tiny portion of Roger’s ability. Some of the current batch of prisoners had been detected by Haxigoji graduates of the training programme.

They normally resided, the non-Pilot prisoners, in ultra-secure facilities on one of three isolated realspace worlds; but for the test, Roger had commandeered a long-disused deep-space research station. He had wanted a place where he and Nectarblossom had total control, and got it.

Roger had not been party to the Admiralty discussion regarding renegade Pilots, but it had been decided on high that certain trusted Haxigoji would be told of the renegades’ existence – to the best of Roger’s knowledge, Nectarblossom was the first to learn of it – on the basis that the programme’s graduates needed to be prepared for anything, including the detection of renegade Pilots operating among ordinary humans on realspace worlds.